Top 4 Mobile App Development Nightmares

Nightmare No 1. – Cost and Time to Market

Oh boy, developing this mobile app made us go broke.

This is definitely the biggest. Get ready to pay a lot of money! I would say anywhere between $20,000 and $100,000 if you are serious about it.

Good developers are hard (read: impossible) to find:

Mobile apps are developed in programming languages that most web developers do not know how to program in. ObjectiveC is the dominating programming language for iOS. That language just recently started getting bigger adoption and the learning curve is much steeper than for web development languages. That results in: a) a smaller number of highly skilled developers and b) higher developer salaries.

Multiply your costs by number of platforms:

Did we say developers are more expensive? We might have underestimated. Multiply that by two, three, or even four. Or just let us know which one of these platforms you don’t want to support:

Time to market – measured in months:

Mobile development is very, very, very slow. It literally takes forever. Mobile developers are expensive but that does not mean they are fast. Three months is a safe minimum, more realistically it will be six months or more. And when you think you’re done, you actually are not. There is the iTunes App Review process and who knows what can go wrong there.

Nightmare No 2. – App Store / Google Play

Should I consider hiring a former NASA scientist?

You might think that most of the work is done when you are finished with development of your app. Unfortunately publishing apps to the various stores is a rather complex process and requires a developer to do that. You will have to understand all of this:

Compiling binaries

Distribution certificates

Private keys

Push notifications certificates

InApp purchases subscription certificates

Dozens of pages of forms you need to fill in detail

Uploading binary to iTunes, Google play

Providing proper description and images for your app

Communicating with Apple App Review team

This is nothing like putting your website on the server and you are good to go, like anyone can do it.

Nightmare No 3. – iPhone and Android Upgrades

Maintaining compatibility with every update of the iPhone and Android operating systems is a full-time job on it’s own. Both platforms are rapidly developing and sometimes do not maintain backward compatibility on some of the features that can break your app.

Screen resolutions:

You’ve heard about the bigger screen on the iPhone5, right? Well, that is a child’s play comparing to Android devices. Do you understand any of this below? If not better start learning.

OS Updates:

And we only touched screen resolutions. How about OS updates? They will most likely break your app or at least make it look outdated. For example:

No support for latest iOS native Facebook and Twitter integration. (Add $5,000 to your dev budget)

Not compatible with new iOS maps. (Add $10,000 to your dev budget)

You cannot share to Pinterest? (Add $4,000)

No support for new Facebook like home screen? (Add $7.000)

And the list goes on and on and on… every month… for many years…and keeps adding and adding.

Nightmare No 4. – Managing Content

Get ready to learn some code.

After all the money you’ve spent, you’d probably expect something like this:

An easy way of updating the content, by someone who isn’t tech savvy

All new content that’s immediately visible in the app

Easy ways to change, add or update functionality in the app in real-time

But the reality is much different:

Features are baked in the app

Every change requires developers to republish the app

You cannot activate new features without more development and going through App Review process

No way to change existing functionality without more development

So, is it possible to get around all that?

ShoutEm’s mission is to make all of the above problems disappear. By choosing the right mobile platform you can save ton of time and many headaches. Here’s how we are alleviating all the possible nightmares.

No 1: We reduce the costs to minimum. Starting from $19/month.

No 2: We handle all the steps required to publish the apps

No 3: We automatically update and upgrade your app every month

No 4: We provide most simple and most powerful mobile CMS on the market

Over last two years we’ve built beautiful, simple yet powerful tool and you are welcome to give it a spin at www.shoutem.com for free!